Your Turn: 120 Days
My one thought, before I make room for discussion, is to wonder: is just the experience of approaching these images its own metaphor for the war? My first inclination -- probably a common one -- was to keep my distance. After that, I didn't know where I went or...
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Oh Christmas Tree, Oh (Chinese) Christmas Tree
Héctor Mediavilla -- one of those fine, up-and-coming Spanish photographers you've met in Barcelona -- captured these stunning images of Christmas in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo. And sure, he thinks it's ironic the Christmas toys, trees and trinkets come courtesy of the good-hearted subsidization...
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Religion, Race And The Islamic Bomb: Looking At What We're Talking About
In the last two weeks, the NYT has published two prominent pieces touting the growth prospects of nuclear oblivion.So, what does this have to do with a seven-year-old daughter of a Ukrainian liquidator born with cerebral palsy? The reminder, in the powerful image above by Spanish photographer Lourdes Segade, is...
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Fashion Of The Times
Courtesy of this livejournal community, we have access to the fashion spread from September's Vogue Italia. One person who wrote me described the images as evoking rape fantasies and, conversely, the expression of female power. Well, I think that misses the point. What we have here is a very...
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Your Turn: Grasping The Ephemeral
Marc, one of two originators of woostercollective, featured this photo as part of his recollection of 9/11. Along with the image, he describes how the attacks served as the genesis for this unique and invaluable site. Now five years old, woostercollective is as intrinsic to the practice of street...
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Your Turn: Something That Isn't There
In the extended quote from his blog, David Burnett refers to his photo spread in the August edition of National Geographic. Using his cherished large format Speed Graphic, the shallow depth of field created a particularly unusual effect. With Katrina's impact already other-worldly, Burnett's images add the impression that...
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Katrina Anniversary: The Art Of Misery
As dedicated as I am to political imagery, I hope the stream of Katrina photo-documentation is having some tanglible impact on the reconstruction of the Gulf. However, I'm under no illusion about this week's anniversary visuals. With summer at its exhaustion point, its hard not to see the more...
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Your Turn: Pregnant Pause
In this image, according to VF: "architect and amateur pilot Isabel Daser, eight months pregnant, asked a co-worker to take her portrait as a record of the day." Incredibly, Daser was not aware of the World Trade Center smouldering in the distance. I am interested in your impressions of this...
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Seeing The Unseen, Fifty Years Later
News photographer Robert Adams captured this moment as Shuttlesworth was attempting to enter a whites-only waiting room at the Birmingham Terminal Station on March 6, 1957.... Just a few years after this picture was made, Birmingham’s black citizens would be tortured by Bull Connor’s police dogs, slammed into brick...
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Above The Hold
The most powerful news images are the ones which resonate equally on a political, psychological, emotional and visual level. This photo, by Todd Heisler of The Rocky Mountain News, was one of the winners in the just concluded World Press photo contest. I have seen this shot a number of...
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Your Turn: Flare For The Dramatic
A reader recently referred me to this aerial photograph. It's part of a series of three shots, as well as an accompanying video. He writes: I've been trying to figure out why, or what is it about these photos that make them so remarkable. It can't because they were taken...
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Like Yesterday
Bound for Glory: America in Color is the first major exhibition of the little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI). Comprised of seventy digital prints made from color transparencies taken between 1939 and 1943, this exhibition reveals a surprisingly...
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War Without Edit
If you’re faint of heart, I don’t recommend these images to you. But I commend Salon for running this article, "The Unseen War," along with the devastating photo gallery. As someone who is regularly featuring war images, I’m continuously uneasy that I’m mostly showing the "more consumable" content. Am...
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